


Grateful For More Than Just A Coffee

by vexedcer



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Families of Choice, Fluff, M/M, idk what this i found it on my drive and finished it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-06
Updated: 2015-04-06
Packaged: 2018-03-21 15:42:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3697805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vexedcer/pseuds/vexedcer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(The fancy-shmancy stuff his coffee maker brews doesn’t taste right in his mouth, it’s too strong or too creamy, or otherwise it’s too complicated to get what he actually wants; he’s taken to technology like a fish to water over the last couple of years, but Tony’s build-in gadgets are too fiddly for the life of him).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grateful For More Than Just A Coffee

_“Is this the first time you lost a soldier?”_

_“We are not soldiers!”_

Steve thinks, when Tony’s snarl is finished ringing in his head, that it’s a weird memory to come back at this point in time.

He’s looking at his teammates - his friends, sitting around his living room. They're passing around his sketchbook, which he had abandoned in his search for a decent coffee (the fancy-shmancy stuff his coffee maker brews doesn’t taste right in his mouth, it’s too strong or too creamy, or otherwise it’s too complicated to get what he actually wants; he’s taken to technology like a fish to water over the last couple of years, but Tony’s build-in gadgets are too fiddly for the life of him).

He's leaning in the doorway, completely silent - a thing he thinks he'll never completely get used to, even after all this time, not clunking elbows off of things and tripping on his own feet - with a mug of coffee he swiped from Clint's floor. Steve knows that the archer doesn't like the machine coffee either.

They're laughing, and it dawns on Steve, that they're all miracles.

When he used to go to Sunday School, miracles were described as - and he remembers it so perfectly because he could never remember it until his teacher made him learn it at the threat of a paddling - an extraordinary gift or event given to mankind by God.

Now, Steve's faith has been through the ringer these last few years. He doesn't believe in the God he used to, but he believes in something. And he doesn't want to call whatever it is he believes "God" because, well, he personally knows a god. His life definitely is very strange. But we digress.

Steve realises that none of them should be here, least of all him.

Thor should be on a different planet, or galaxy, or realm. Bruce should by all accounts be dead, after being exposed to so much gamma radiation. Clint should have taken Natasha out, but he made a different call. Loki should have taken Clint out, but Natasha saved his life. Tony should have died in Afghanistan. Bucky should have died in a ravine in 1944, in a POW camp that same year. Sam should have died with Riley. Steve should have frozen to death in the Arctic; hell, should have died in a eugenics experiment in some over-flashy Brooklyn basement.

And yet.

Steve doesn't think he's ever had a family like this one. Steve's never really had a family, period. That's what they are, he thinks - family. He knows it from the way Sam and Clint are laughing at his cartoon doodle of them as birds in a nest. The way Natasha is making bird jokes and the way Thor is laughing uproariously at them, even if they're the so-bad-they're-good variety.

They’ve all been through personal hells. And here they are - _laughing_ at Steve’s idle little drawings.

They're not soldiers, Tony was right. Tony and Bruce were never soldiers to start with. Thor is a warrior, but somehow that's different to a soldier. Natasha and Clint are spies. And Steve, and Sam, and Bucky; they're more than soldiers.

They’re all people before they’re anything else.

(On worse days, Bucky disagrees with the last point. He never outright says that he thinks its moot, but Steve’s known him long enough on either side of the ice to get it. Loved him long enough to not let him dwell in that line of thought.

The media seems to share Bucky’s changing opinion, only they’re less indecisive. They will never stop seeing Tony as a weapons dealer, Steve as a SuperHero, patent-pending, and Bucky as a victim. They deal.)

Steve takes a swig of coffee, and thanks his Ma, and Bucky, and Doctor Erskine, and whatever form of deity he has some faith in that hes here drinking coffee he had to steal from the floor below, watching his friends’ admire his work.

They're not soldiers. They're miracles.


End file.
